[NeedKarma]

Corporatism,Cronyism and Fascism is really socialism regardless of who is in power.

I guess the question becomes: what is NOT socialism in a conservative's eye?
Also - there's nothing inherently wrong with socialism, not sure why you want to make it a pejorative.

[TUT317]

Corporatism,Cronyism and Fascism is really socialism regardless of who is in power.

Hi again Tom,

No. It is a gross over simplification to lump them all together. There is no empirical reason to think we can.

I think we have already been through this with the discussion on political spectrum.

Tut

[tomder55]

Back to my point. The Dems have embraced corportate welfare ,and a state-corporate relationship since at least the New Deal . Roosevelt simultaneously spoke against greed and the evils of the corporations while secretly admiring the Mussolini model . Mussolini himself praised the New Deal as following his model.
Roosevelt's National Recovery Act (NRA) attempted to cartelize the American economy just as Mussolini had cartelized Italy's. Under the NRA Roosevelt established industry-wide boards with the power to set and enforce prices, wages, and other terms of employment, production, and distribution for all companies in an industry. Through the Agricultural Adjustment Act the government exercised similar control over farmers. The object was to reduce competition and output in order to keep prices and incomes of particular groups from falling during the Great Depression.
Fascism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

[TUT317]

Back to my point. The Dems have embraced corportate welfare ,and a state-corporate relationship since at least the New Deal . Roosevelt simultaneously spoke against greed and the evils of the corporations while secretly admiring the Mussolini model . Mussolini himself praised the New Deal as following his model.
Roosevelt's National Recovery Act (NRA) attempted to cartelize the American economy just as Mussolini had cartelized Italy's. Under the NRA Roosevelt established industry-wide boards with the power to set and enforce prices, wages, and other terms of employment, production, and distribution for all companies in an industry. Through the Agricultural Adjustment Act the government exercised similar control over farmers. The object was to reduce competition and output in order to keep prices and incomes of particular groups from falling during the Great Depression.
Fascism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

I see, Roosevelt used violence, secret police and prison camps when implementing his economic plan. Mussolini was happy to include labor unions in his state controlled economy. Socialism is just an economic theory.

As I said before similarities without a distinction.

Tut

[tomder55]

I see, Roosevelt used violence, secret police and prison camps when implementing his economic plan. Mussolini was happy to include labor unions in his state controlled economy. Socialism is just an economic theory.

As I said before similarities without a distinction.

Tut

You mention methods of enforcement ;not differences in policies. Roosevelt made accommodations for private sector unions because he thought his cartels would stifle the power of labor without government intervention.. However ,he realized that there was no place for public sector unionization.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters. Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.(FDR)

[talaniman]

Dwight D. Eisenhower - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower adhered to a political philosophy of dynamic conservatism.[103] He continued all the major New Deal programs still in operation, especially Social Security. He expanded its programs and rolled them into a new cabinet-level agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, while extending benefits to an additional ten million workers. He implemented integration in the Armed Services in two years, which had not been completed under Truman.[104]

As the 1954 congressional elections approached, and it became evident that the Republicans were in danger of losing their thin majority in both houses, Eisenhower was among those blaming the Old Guard for the losses, and took up the charge to stop suspected efforts by the right wing to take control of the GOP. Ike then articulated his position as a moderate, progressive Republican: "I have just one purpose...and that is to build up a strong progressive Republican Party in this country. If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it...before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism or I won't be with them anymore."[105]

Just pointing out we have been down this road before,and Eisenhowers worst nightmare has come true. The far right conservatives are loose upon society again.

And while all this right wing rhetoric is nice spin, its apparent that such a group cannot set policy for everyone in the country and without compromise through consensus. It's the obstruction that creates the gridlock, in an effort to promote the new conservative agenda, that not only is a narrow view of the world, but a very constrictive force on the nation as a whole. No broad brushing or ignoring the facts can change the FACT that wordsmithing, or marketing and spin can hide the fact that a party of white guys has no relevance to the well being of anyone but their own, and no matter how many minority faces they trot out for display will hide the fact that they are the party of rich white guys and lowly informed racists who long for the good old days instead of dealing with the real world.

How else can you explain every progressive fact as a straw argument, and every conservative rant as a fact? They expect the very people they target for scorn to cut their own throats, and go along with that kind of BS?

I don't think so!

[tomder55]

So it is in fact the Dems that want to take us back to the days of rabbit ear antennas!
You of course are also speaking of a Democrat party that is completely unrecognizable from it's Truman /JFK days . Heck ,George McGovern would be too conservative for the "progressives " today.

[paraclete]

It is interesting to note that the Democratic party was once known as the Republican party and that various party splits created the Republican Party back in the dawn of time, 150 years ago it wasn't good policy that ensured a Republican victory but democratic indecisiveness regarding their position. Could history repeat itself, the Republicans have fielded a man who is truly a compromise candidate

[talaniman]

so it is in fact the Dems that want to take us back to the days of rabbit ear antennas !!
You of course are also speaking of a Democrat party that is completely unrecognizable from it's Truman /JFK days . Heck ,George McGovern would be too conservative for the "progressives " today.

There you go with those crazy FACTS again.You do well know that's not what the presidents intent was, he was knocking YOU guys. Ane we don't care about the issues and actions of 20,or 30, 40,or fifty years ago.

All we have to do is remember Ted Kennedy, or Bill Clinton to have our example of OUTSTANDING DEEDS!! Flawed humans that they were, they still accomplished much.

It is interesting to note that the Democratic party was once known as the Republican party and that various party splits created the Republican Party back in the dawn of time, 150 years ago it wasn't good policy that ensured a Republican victory but democratic indecisiveness regarding their position. Could history repeat itself, the Republicans have fielded a man who is truly a compromise candidate

LOL, the difference now than ever before is the loony right actually has money behind it!! They can holler and scream and sling mud, and republican have no choice but to go along because they NEED every loony vote they can get, and it still may not be enough.

All republicans have is their crazy base that they have to lie to, but governing from that position?

I don't think so!

[TUT317]

You mention methods of enforcement ;not differences in policies. Roosevelt made accomodations for private sector unions because he thought his cartels would stifle the power of labor without government intervention.. However ,he realized that there was no place for public sector unionization.

Well, yes I would mention differences in enforcement. I would also mention differences in policy. In exactly the same way I would mention similarities in policy.

But, that's my point. For all the similarities they are as many differences. It is too convenient to just pick the similarities and then want to claim they are identical. You can do this if you want to take complex concepts and put them into neat categories. This is just a re visit to the defunct linear political spectrum. One dimensional analysis gives rise to simplistic solutions.

Tut

[tomder55]

There you go with those crazy FACTS again.You do well know that's not what the presidents intent was, he was knocking YOU guys. Ane we don't care about the issues and actions of 20,or 30, 40,or fifty years ago.

Then why do you bring up Ike ? He was from an era when the Repubics had been out of power for 20 years and had surrendered to big government .

[tomder55]

Well, yes I would mention differences in enforcement. I would also mention differences in policy. In exactly the same way I would mention similarities in policy.

But, that's my point. For all the similarities they are as many differences. It is too convenient to just pick the similarities and then want to claim they are identical. You can do this if you want to take complex concepts and put them into neat categories. This is just a re visit to the defunct linear political spectrum. One dimensional analysis gives rise to simplistic solutions.

Tut

It's the difference between tyranny and soft tyranny .

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
C.S. Lewis

Ask farmer Roscoe Filburn who was fined and threatened with penalty because his personal wheat crop affected the master planners notion of how much he should grow, about Roosevelt's tyranny .

The result is the very thing Alexis de Tocqueville feared for France :

I would like to imagine with what new traits despotism could be produced in the world. I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, who turn about without repose in order to procure for themselves petty and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. …
Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood; it loves the fact that the citizens enjoy themselves provided that they dream solely of their own enjoyment. It works willingly for their happiness, but it wishes to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in the principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their testaments, divides their inheritances. Can it not relieve them entirely of the trouble of thinking and of the effort associated with living?

In this fashion, every day, it renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare; it confines the action of the will within a smaller space, and bit by bit it steals from each citizen the use of that which is his own. Equality has prepared men for all of these things: it has disposed them to put up with them and often even to regard them as a benefit.

After having taken each individual in this fashion by turns into its powerful hands, and after having kneaded him in accord with its desires, the sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations – complicated, minute, and uniform – through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way past the crowd and emerge into the light of day. It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting on one's own; it does not destroy; it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way, it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm

[paraclete]

What Alexis de Tocqueville feared for France we also fear for the US, in fact for any country that doesn't hold its politicians to account.

[talaniman]

Dead on Clete

Democracy in America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[I]nstruct democracy, if possible to reanimate its beliefs, to purify its mores, to regulate its movements, to substitute little by little the science of affairs for its inexperience, and knowledge of its true instincts for its blind instincts; to adapt its government to time and place; to modify it according to circumstances and men: such is the first duty imposed on those who direct society in our day.[5]

The remainder of the book can be interpreted as an attempt to accomplish this goal thereby giving advice to those people who would experience this change in social states.

While Tocqueville speaks highly of the America's Constitution, he believes that the mores, or "habits of mind" of the American people play a more prominent role in the protection of freedom.

According to Tocqueville, democracy had some unfavorable consequences: the tyranny of the majority over thought, a preoccupation with material goods, and isolated individuals. Democracy in America predicted the violence of party spirit and the judgment of the wise subordinated to the prejudices of the ignorant.

And Filburn I must point out, spent several years in litigations before he lost.

Acting under the 1938 Act, the agricultural conservation committee for Montgomery County assessed a penalty of $0.49 against each of Mr. Filburn's 239 excess bushels. Mr. Filburn challenged the penalty, and the entire Agricultural Adjustment Act, as a violation of the constitutional limits on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce.

$117 dollars to keep growing his wheat. Hardly a punishment for breaking the law.

[tomder55]

Filburn was right ;and the SCOTUS decision put a rubber stamp on the government's massive power grab ever since.

[paraclete]

Dead on Clete

$117 dollars to keep growing his wheat. Hardly a a punishment for breaking the law.

In those days equivalent to several thousand dollars today and probably severe for a farmer coming out of the depression

We are all subject to the tyranny of the majority, but sadly also to the tyranny of the minority. We cannot speak our minds regarding the behaviour of any particular minority otherwise we will charged with racism, with discrimination. I am unable to say that something offends me less I be vilifying a minority, not because my words are wrong, but because they present an opposing view. Where did this nonsense come from? From the political arena because politicians wanted to curry favour and used the power of a majority to silence a minority, me.

This is not democracy, because true democracy allows every person to put their view.
Know well, you do not live in a democracy, you live in a tyranny.

[talaniman]

Not as long as we have a fair court system. That could take some work, but its better than a tyranny of the rich. That takes some work too!

It's a never ending battle.

[paraclete]

You already suffer the tyranny of the rich, can any ordinary person become your president? not without the backing of the rich

[TUT317]

It's the difference between tyranny and soft tyranny .

Ok then, I'll go along with soft tyranny being socialism.

Conversely 'isms' like fascism are tyrannical.

Hence you have exposed one feature that distinguishes socialism from fascism.

Fascism cannot be socialism because they exhibit at least one distinguishing feature.

Tut

[tomder55]

Yeah a field mouse is different from a house mouse .